Paul Klee Quotes
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One day I will lie nowhere with an angel at my side.
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See with one eye, feel with the other.
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I must begin, not with hypothesis, but with specific instances, no matter how minute.
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The artist of today is more than an improved camera, he is more complex, richer, and wider. He is a creature on the earth and a creature within the whole, that is, a creature on a star among stars.
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A line is a dot that went for a walk.
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In earlier days, even as a child, the beauty of landscapes was quite clear to me. A background for the soul's moods. Now dangerous moments occur when Nature tries to devour me; at such times I am annihilated, but at peace. This would be fine for old people but I... I am my life's debtor, for I have given promises.
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Art does not reflect what is seen, rather it makes the hidden visible.
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All the things an artist must be: poet, explorer of nature, philosopher!
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My hand is entirely the implement of a distant sphere. It is not my head that functions but something else, something higher, something somewhere remote. I must have great friends there, dark as well as bright. They are all very kind to me.
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The way to form transcends its own destination, goes beyond the end of the way itself.
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He has found his style, when he cannot do otherwise.
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When looking at any significant work of art, remember that a more significant one probably has had to be sacrificed.
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My mirror probes down to the heart. I write words on the forehead and around the corners of the mouth. My human faces are truer than the real ones.
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The more horrifying the world becomes, the more art becomes abstract.
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What my art probably lacks is a kind of passionate humanity... There is no sensuous relationship, not even the noblest, between myself and the many.
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A drawing is simply a line going for a walk.
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All is well with me. The rain doesn't reach me, my room is well heated, what more can one ask for? There's no shortage of work, either.
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Nature is garrulous to the point of confusion, let the artist be truly taciturn.
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Spatial art does not begin with a poetic mood or idea, but with construction of one or more figures, with the harmonizing of several colors and tones, or with the devaluation of spatial relationships and so on.
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From the root, the sap rises up into the artist, flows through him, flows to his eye. Overwhelmed and activated by the force of the current, he conveys his vision into his work. And yet, standing at his appointed place as the trunk of the tree, he does nothing other than gather and pass on what rises from the depths. He neither serves nor commands he transmits. His position is humble. And the beauty at the crown is not his own; it has merely passed through him.
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My self . . . is a dramatic ensemble. Here a prophetic ancestor makes his appearance. Here a brutal hero shouts. Here an alcoholic bon vivant argues with a learned professor. Here a lyric muse, chronically love-struck, raises her eyes to heaven. Her papa steps forward, uttering pedantic protests. Here the indulgent uncle intercedes. Here the aunt babbles gossip. Here the maid giggles lasciviously. And I look upon it all with amazement, the sharpened pen in my left hand.
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Everything vanishes around me, and works are born as if out of the void. Ripe, graphic fruits fall off. My hand has become the obedient instrument of a remote will.
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I still come closest to success with drawing. When I use color the results are dubious, for these painfully gained experiences bear less fruit.
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The painter should not paint what he sees, but what will be seen.